Hacker News Reader

It really has to be part of the company culture and a top-down process. If the higher-ups are on the forced 8-hours-in-the-seat plan, then why should the employees get more freedom than them? There's an unspoken "if I'm going to suffer, so are you!"

Besides the obvious flexible time benefits, this shifts a lot of accountability and responsibility from upper management down to lower levels. It's also a nice perceived "gift" or "compensation" from up on high without having to pay out actual monetary raises or bonuses.

I've worked at way too many places where ppl just chill at home most of the time.

Were these effective teams/companies? It doesn't sound like it. What went wrong? Could you see it working right?

In my experience these kind of people just chill in the office if they are forced to come in, but appear busy by proximity and association with their coworkers. When the most important metric is work-done and not butt-in-seat-hours, it can actually be easier for (effective) managers to filter out the ineffective employees.